Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Govt finally acknowledges widespread JSC examination leaks

Daily Naya Diganta,

Saturday, 16th November 2013, 05:39 pm

Amanur Rahman

JSC (Junior School Certificate) examination is being conducted using the same question paper under the eight general Education Boards of the country. Till date exams of 6 subjects have been held. Complaints have surfaced of allegations that the question paper of each of the 5 exams has been leaked. It is mentionable that although the daily Naya Diganta had been reporting on the question leak incidents since the very first day of the exam, the board authorities never paid any heed. Regrettably, the Education board officials only started taking notice when several more newspapers published the news of question paper leaks. But by that time the third and fourth exams had already finished. That was also about the time when the inter-boards co-ordination committee woke up. As per board-related sources, it was made sure that before the fifth exam, the pre-determined question set was changed. This was confirmed from a ground inspection of the different examination halls and via the students themselves. The General Science examination held on Saturday was taken via the set B question paper, which was why no similarity was found between the leaked questions and the question paper given to students at the exam halls. It is mentionable that when the attention of the convener of the inter-boards co-ordination committee had been drawn to the topic of question leaks at the first instance of the rise of such allegations; she brushed them off as claims of little or no importance. Professor Taslima Begum, the convener of the inter-boards co-ordination committee and Dhaka Education Board chairman, had avoided the topic of question leaks when confronted with the initial reports of the leaks, terming them as nothing more than “suggestions prepared by experienced teachers”. The same however, formed an investigation committee on the question leak incidents after the fifth day’s exam under the pressure from the ministry of education. The Board Chairman however explained to the Naya Diganta that the 3 member committee had been formed, “to justify the complaints you published in the newspapers. It will start working after the Education minister returns to Dhaka and approves it”. A trusted source from the Dhaka Education Board informed that a meeting of higher officials of the board was held in the board chairman’s office in the morning on Saturday. Here the news of question leaks in the dailies was discussed and an investigation committee was formed. On the other hand, an investigation from various sources on the ground revealed that a class of coaching centers had been taking ‘special exams’ on the night before the JSC exams, right from the first exam day itself. The questions coming in those ‘special’ exams were found to be the same ones that appeared in the main exam. Such was reported in the case of Bangla 1st and 2nd paper, English 2nd paper and 1st paper. And it was found that the text version questions of these exams were spread throughout the country using mobile SMS, taking advantage of the fact that all the eight boards used the same sets of questions. More shocking is the fact that a circle of unscrupulous advantage seekers used the opportunity to even do business, through selling the question sheets. This is due to the fact that the English 2nd paper exam question sheet which was widely available the night before last Thursday was the same question used in the main exam. Parents and guardians, encouraged by the above phenomenon, were seen buying the available science exam sets that were found in Dhaka the night before Saturday. As the report said above, the board, taking notice of the leakage of exam questions, changed the set of the science exams on Saturday morning in an effort towards damage control. A similar trend was seen before the math examination too, as two sets of supposedly “leaked exam questions” were seen available in different parts of Dhaka.